Masters of the art, or slaves to the medium: A comparison of Citytv and CBC TV news production styles.

Television news has long been thought of as an information giving medium, and yet researchers often find very low rates of news information recall among viewers. This raises the question Why do we watch, and what do we get from it? This thesis contends that people will habitually watch the newscast that is packaged the way they like; basing their preference on production factors. The hypothesis is that information recall is then based on production factors, in effect, preference affects information recall. Two models were constructed for testing: one inspired by the work of Graber (1990) that inspects the relationship between preference and recall; a second inspired by Price and Czilli (1996) that deals with the relationship between media use and cognitive ability and their effects on recall. To test these models two radically different Canadian television news production styles are identified (CBC and Citytv), and setup in an experimental juxtaposition. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)Dept. of Communication Studies. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1997 .L37. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 39-02, page: 0313. Adviser: Richard Lewis. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1998